Album Notes

R.D.Jansen, Symphony No. 2.1: “Anatta” [66:58]

The subtitle, Anatta, is the fascinating Buddhist doctrine that thoughts, actions and their consequences exist, but a “self” that acts does not. The more we look inside ourselves, the more we see that there is nothing there, no self at all, Anatta. Existence of a personal self is an illusion, created and maintained by our selfish genes to make possible the terrible sacrifices of reproduction. Like hurricanes, we have a birth place and a name and a wobbly path as destructive as it is generative. When our accumulated energy dissipates, the eye of the storm, the self, fades into oblivion.

Symphony No.2.1 came into being without a written score. It consists of only the real time actions and reactions that you hear. It is therefore not so much an intentional communication as it is a garden of interesting collisions. The track descriptions are post-hoc literary conceits, concentric circles drawn around arrows that had already landed.

Love Was a Violin [17:38]: A movement for uncertain lovers, not at all brave or steady: it is delicately neurotic, suggestive, infuriating. Resolutions are dark and fantasies intrude continually.

Folie de Grandeur [9:23]: this hymn to power begins with Icarus’ swoop toward the sun. The thundering hubris of a pipe organ is contrasted with the tiny sacristy bells of conscience. The organ again screams for power, leaving a lone flute to lament. Brass artillery leave great sound craters when they stop, a wasteland of crystalline fragments, shards of sound. Pizzicato strings step gingerly over fallen comrades and then provide a final benediction.

Nibbling [7:23] A gentle and delicate vibraphone pulses and dances a lacy dance around a steady melody: The feeling of fish nibbling at your toes. Then a glib clarinet tries to be funny, telling musical jokes.

Sound and Fury [7:31] A twisted chord wrings painfully, pensive strings ask lofty questions, wondering if beauty is enough for morality. A suspension in air, cloudlike, atmosphere shimmering, but darkened chords, smeared melodies overreach a bumbling organ: grand actions and philosophical realizations on a background of trivial pursuit.

Quiet Desperation [5:35] Dark foreboding, French horns blare depression as things go from bad to worse. Strings are stuttering as disintegration begins. Horns continue to boast and blare, violins still complain, ranting and repeating. Restless lives of quiet desperation.

Anatta [18:43] A confused sea storm in the weather of mind: lyrical intention persists over many kinds of autistic continuo, twisted and tortured into ribbons and fragments.